


shadows hold their breath

by Lirazel



Category: Shadows - Robin McKinley
Genre: F/M, Post-Book(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-06 11:15:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5414729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not that there weren’t reasons to smile. They might be fighting a war, and she might be right in the thick of the fighting herself, and she might have drive several hours to close a cobey every few weeks when Jill’s forehead wrinkled and the f-word kicked in. She might be tired and worried about those she loved most of the time. But she still had her family and Jill and origami and <i>Sworddaughter</i> reruns and hot chocolate and all kinds of critters and Takahiro.</p>
            </blockquote>





	shadows hold their breath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [meretricula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meretricula/gifts).



> Title comes from Emily Dickinson.
> 
> I agree with what you said in your prompts about the ending of the book--it leaves you wanting more, doesn't it? Writing this fic gave me the excuse to figure out what would happen after Goat Creek, and I thank you so much for that! I hope you enjoy the fic as much as I enjoyed writing it! Happy Yuletide!

Dawn was approaching when Maggie heard the crunch of gravel under tires and jerked out of sleep. In the first hazy moment of consciousness, she couldn’t remember what had woken her. But after a moment of rapid blinking and brushing away mental cobwebs, she remembered the spell, one of the first she’d taught herself out of her great-grandmother’s books. It was just a little charm, but apparently it had worked: even though she was on the opposite side of the house and three floors up from the driveway, she’d heard the van pulling up. The sound she’d been waiting for.

She tossed aside the bedcovers and barely winced when her bare feet hit the cold of the wood floor. The moon had already set so the room was pitch black, but she still managed to find her robe and slide her arms into the sleeves, tying the belt as she stumbled to the door.

The floors of the hallways and staircases were lined with woven rugs that were who-knew-how-old, but that felt wonderfully soft under her feet as she hurried down the halls, avoiding the spots she knew were most creaky. There were at least seventeen people asleep in the various rooms she passed, and most of them didn’t get nearly enough rest. She didn’t want to wake anyone.

A draft whirled around her and she hugged herself at its cold shock when she came around the corner and found herself at the top of the main staircase. There was a lamp lit on the first floor, and she could see that the front door was open, the light spilling down the wide stone stairs and onto the driveway. The faint sound of voices floated up to her as she raced down the stairs, her fingers bumping over the spindles of the balustrade. She was going too fast to recognize any of the tiny creatures carved into each wooden spindle, but she was incapable of going down these stairs without touching them. She didn’t need anyone to tell her that her great-grandmother had always done the same.

She didn’t even hesitate at the way the first cold of late autumn snapped around her as she barreled out the front door, blinking in the darkness. The shadows from the light streaming out from behind her fell in strange ways, but all shadows fell in strange ways in Haven these days, and she focused on the people instead. Danielle, Jill’s mom, looked up surprised where she was standing with her arms wrapped around Arnie, but Aunt Gwenda, talking quietly with Jamal, barely glanced at Maggie as she tossed an, “All safe,” over her shoulder.

Maggie let out a little sigh of relief, her eyes taking roll. All safe, indeed: they looked tired by uninjured other than—presumably—the cuts and bruises that were the payments for any raid, and they were all here: Arnie, Jamal, Casimir, a short round woman who had to be the witch they’d gone out to free and—

A large shape disconnected itself from the shadows and then a cold nose was pressing against her hand and she found herself sighing in relief again as she wriggled her cold fingers into the ruff at the wolf’s neck. “Taks,” she breathed. The tension that held her rigid whenever anyone she cared about left Haven flowed out of her. Sometimes she stayed so tense for so long that her body ached after Mom or one of her aunts or Jill or Val came back from a mission, but it was worst with Takahiro, which was kind of ridiculous considering that of everyone she knew, he was least likely to be permanently injured by anything that happened to him.

“Let’s all get some sleep,” Arnie said, stepping out of Danielle’s hug and sliding his arm around her shoulder. “We can debrief in the morning.”

Gwenda had taken the witch—what was her name? Alilah? Aliah? Something like that? Maggie’s mind wasn’t awake enough to remember—by the arm and was murmuring about finding her a room. Casimir gave Maggie a nod, still strangely Oldworld even though he’d been here for a year now, and Maggie barely managed to answer in a wave before she turned away, Takahiro by her side, and headed back inside.

This time, instead of letting her magic and her own muscle memory lead her back through the dark corridors, she let Takahiro’s wolf eyes do it. They glowed gold in the dark, and she could see shimmers of movement and little silverbug eyes blinking here and there as they passed: _gruuaa_ welcoming him home. 

Back in their room (her room, really, since Takahiro technically had his own on the second floor, but even Mom didn’t do much except make a few dry remarks about how he seemed to spend more time in Maggie’s room than his own), she pulled the door closed and shrugged out of her robe. She heard the click of Takahiro’s claws against the wood, then the sound of him jumping up and flopping onto the bed. She crawled in quickly behind him. The sheets had gotten cold even though she’d only been gone a few minutes, but they wouldn’t stay that way for long. She snuggled closer to Taks and pulled the quilt up over them. Every bed in this house had one of the quilts made by one of the various witches of the family, but somehow Maggie had convinced her mom to let her have the one that had hung on the wall of their home all through her childhood. It smelled like pine no matter how often it was washed, and it was her favorite. She spent the nights whenever Taks was gone running her fingers over the little picture of Hix (well, it was probably Hix’s cousin or something since there was no way her grandmother had known Hix herself, but Maggie still thought of the image as being of Hix) along the border.

It only took a moment of lying with her arms wrapped around the big shaggy wolf body before she felt a shift in her arms, heard the sound of Takahiro’s breathing changing, and suddenly she was lying with her arms around a big lanky boy’s body. “ _Hisashiburi_ ,” she whispered. Takahiro was teaching her serious Japanese now. Not only was it good for him—“I don’t want to forget the only language my mom ever talked to me in—” but Maggie also loved it herself. “It’s a little disrespectful, only learning words here and there,” Jill had said. “And when you learn someone’s language, you learn a lot about them.” It was true; Maggie felt like she was learning more about her family whenever one of her aunts taught her another bit of magic, and she was beginning to understand Val better than she’d ever thought she could since the words of the magic he taught her were Orzaskan. But she still liked Japanese best.

“ _Yaho_ ,” Takahiro answered. He sounded tired, but regular-tired. Not totally-drained dead-battery tired like he did—like any of them did—after the worst missions.

“Everything went smoothly?” Maggie asked, tucking her cold feet against Taks’ warm thighs. He let out a little half-canine yelp and she knew he was glaring at her even though she couldn’t actually see him.

“About as smoothly as these things go. Got hairy a couple of times, but we got her out without anyone being injured so.”

“So a victory.” Maggie had learned to take them where she could. “You’re sure nobody got hurt?” She wiggled her fingers between herself and Taks and tweaked the scar tissue above his left nipple. “No more scars?” She let out a squeak when he pinched her side.

“Why? You want me to look more like a patchwork quilt than I already do?” It was an exaggeration; Takahiro had accumulated a lot of scars over the last year (and each time she saw one, it made Maggie’s heart ache), but there was still plenty of smooth skin for her to enjoy.

“Why not?” she teased. “They make you look manly.”

In response, she got the kind of silence only Takahiro could offer, judgmental and glowering. She had to stifle a giggle; he was so him, and it was so good to have him home, even if he’d only been gone for two days. It always felt like much longer.

Taks let out a long sigh and she felt him go a little limp in her arms, like he was finally allowing himself to relax. “Good to be home?” she asked.

He made a mumbly sound in reply. “I dreeping love this house.”

Normally Maggie wouldn’t have pursued conversation when he was all boneless against her like this, but she was surprised. “You do? Really? It’s so big and rambly.” Big in a completely different way than the house Takahiro had “shared” with his dad on Sunrise Court. That house was big and new and sleek, all neutral colors and minimalist furniture. This house was old and looked like it had been assembled out of three or four smaller houses, though Aunt Blanchefleur said that was because the family hadn’t paid much attention to previous styles whenever they added on. It had dark creaky hallways and damp cellars and dusty attics, too many fireplaces to count, a music room and a library and a billiards room, a thousand odd corners and closets that never seemed to be the same place twice. The furniture was an accumulation of over a century’s worth of fashions, and nothing matched, and most of it was worn and patched. It was surrounded by pine woods on all sides, and mountains beyond that, and there was a quiet that hung over it so thickly that even twenty-odd people (plus various animals, including a very ornery sheep that kept the grass in the yard clipped) couldn’t totally chase it away. Maggie was comfortable here now, but she could never quite forget how much it had unnerved her as a child. Val said it was probably the magic reaching out to her, and she had been anxious because she didn’t know what it was. There was a lot of magic in this house.

“Big enough for all of us,” Taks murmured.

Well, that was true. It was roughly the size of a small hotel. No other house she knew of would be big enough for their whole ‘cell to live in, plus other visiting revolutionaries who needed a temporary safe place to hide or were here to pass along information.

His voice was hazy and low. “And safe.”

Generations’ worth of spells kept the property hidden from those who weren’t invited. Maggie couldn’t imagine, now, how anyone had believed that the denaturizing the army had done could have neutralized such potent magic.

“It’s the first home I’ve had since my mom died. The first real home.”

Maggie couldn’t think of anything at all to say to that that wouldn’t sound flip, so she just carded her fingers through his thick hair.

Takahiro let out a yawn. “She would have liked it here, too.”

“She would have wanted to be part of the Magical Uprising?” From what Taks had told her about his mother, Maggie wasn’t surprised at all.

“She would have been the first to join.”

“I think she would have fit right in,” Maggie said. Takahiro didn’t reply to that, but this silence was a different kind. A pleased kind. She knew how to read all his silences now. Or most of them, at least. She’d had a year of living together to learn them.

Sometimes she couldn’t believe they’d been living at Haven for a whole year, and other times her old life seemed more like a particularly vivid dream than reality. She’d only been back to the house she’d grown up in once, a few weeks after Goat Creek, her and mom and Ran wrapped tight in the protective magic of her mom’s sisters. They hadn’t stayed long, just bundling up the things they couldn’t bear to leave behind and stowing them in the Mammothmobile and driving away forever. Maggie didn’t think she’d ever go back to Station, though there were a few missions that had taken them back to Goat Creek. But the life of being a regular high school student was behind her, even if she did have an algebra book that (mostly) lived on her bedside table.

It wasn’t just her own life, and those of her friends and family, that were so completely changed. When what happened at Goat Creek happened (there were a lot of rumors, all of them confused and half-awed, about a clash of magic and technology that hadn’t been seen for decades in Newworld, but none of them, at least once they filtered back to Maggie, were even remotely like what had really happened), the army started cracking down on the magic users. It started with arresting (the army reports on the radio said “detaining for their own safety,” but Maggie knew bugdreep when she heard it) on a local level anyone who had a family history of magic, but it quickly spread; within months, the borders were shut down completely and no one was allowed in or out of Newworld (though no border patrols could keep out _gruuaa_ , who seemed to have been summoned by their fellows already in Newworld and had started streaming in); by the end of the next year, it was martial law being imposed over the whole country. Of course, the government never used the words “martial law,” instead crafting phrases like “heightened domestic security.” But a war had started and everyone knew it.

Though it wasn’t anything like any war Maggie had ever heard of, at least not at first. At the beginning, Arnie called it guerilla kidwar: most of it was teenagers attacking and ripping apart cobey boxes, college students from Runyon and other universities developing the tech that could disrupt armydar, normal people coming up with increasingly creative ways to undermine army control. But once the arrests heated up—people disappearing off the streets in the middle of the day, old ladies being taken from their craft shops, sometimes even children being separated from their parents—the witchcells started cropping up. 

The witchcells were the rebel groups that originally formed to enable people to break their loved ones free of the military but soon morphed into a proper network of revolutionaries. They took on the kidwar tactics and heightened them, quickly working up new ways to undermine as much military tech as they could, bringing in as many animals as they could (most witchcells adopted an animal mascot for their name, and there was a Greyhound Witchcell and a Marnie Witchcell and a Rusty Witchcell and Whitepaw Witchcell and even one named after an especially stubborn alpaca), and they used about as much tech as they did magic, turning it against the very people who had created. 

Because not everyone involved in the witchcells were magic users; in fact, Maggie knew of a few that didn’t have any magic users or foreseers or anyone with the gene at all. But the name was a weapon in itself. The word ‘witch’ had become almost unspeakable in the years since the gene-chopping. Maggie remembered some broken tool calling his girlfriend that in the supermarket when she was young. The girlfriend had crumpled like he’d hit her and Mom had clapped her hands over Maggie’s ears and hurried her down the aisle. She hadn’t heard the word again for several years, until she hit middle school and some of the boys decided they needed to be edgy and stud their conversation with the worst words they knew. Only a few had the nerve to use the w-word, and the rhetorical rebellion had mostly died out by the time they hit high school. She had a very vivid memory of Jake Barnes’ face twisting up when she told him she didn’t want to be his girlfriend. He’d snarled, “Dreeping wit—” at her but he hadn’t gotten the rest of the word out because Takahiro loomed up beside him, using his newly gained height to his advantage. Despite the height difference, Jake had about twenty pounds on Taks and probably could have flattened him if it had come to a fight, but there had been something about the white fury on Taks’ face that made Jake leave her alone after that—and maybe, in retrospect, Taks had given off a smell that Maggie wouldn’t know the meaning of till she was seventeen.

Anyway, she’d only ever known ‘witch’ to be an unspeakable word, but the rebels decided to reclaim it. Mom had been disturbed at first, but Aunt Rhonwyn had been delighted. “They made it a negative thing in the first place.” Her aunts always called the army and the tech industrial complex ‘them,’ with a kind of sneer that made them look identical. “It’s always been a word of great power. But it’s our word, and it’s time to take it back.”

The lingering negative connotations lent the witchcells an edge they needed. People knew these rebel groups were serious when they called themselves something like that, and people had flocked to join. Maggie had been shocked at how quickly they bloomed, starting first in the nearby towns and fanning quickly across the country. 

“Where are all these people coming from?” Maggie had demanded one night across Haven’s wide dining room table after Paolo brought in reports of new cells as far away as the west coast. “I thought that everyone was fine with the tech approach and that the people who clung to magic were in the minority. But it’s like everyone secretly had a grandmother who told them stories of magic and that no one trusted the tech and the army in the first place. Did _everyone_ have a cauldron in their basement they were just waiting to pull out?”

“All of Newworld was waiting,” Gwenda had said, and when Maggie thought back to the time-before, to her childhood and adolescence that had seemed so normal while she was living them, that time did have an aura of a breath being held before a plunge. Maybe she’d just been too young to recognize it.

The Haven ‘cell was the first witchcell, and Maggie would always be proud of that. “It’s proof you’re the _mgdaga_ ,” Casimir insisted. “You were the spark that started the conflagration.”

Maggie had seen Taks’ eyebrow tilt at Casimir’s use of the word conflagration, but she’d just shrugged off Casimir’s pronouncement. He still sometimes looked at her like she was a mythic figure stepped out of one of his mother’s fairytales, and though they were friends now, she still didn’t like it. But she had modified her stance on being the _mgdadga_ a bit. Instead of outright denial, she now thought of it less as a prophetic chosen one and more as a label that ended up attached after the fact to a girl who did something new. If Casimir and some of the other Oldworld immigrants who’d joined the Haven ‘cell wanted to call her _mgdaga_ , then she could grin and bear it. Well, bear it, at least. She mostly didn’t manage a grin.

Not that there weren’t reasons to smile. They might be fighting a war, and she might be right in the thick of the fighting herself, and she might have drive several hours to close a cobey every few weeks when Jill’s forehead wrinkled and the f-word kicked in. She might be tired and worried about those she loved most of the time. But she still had her family and Jill and origami and _Sworddaughter_ reruns and hot chocolate and all kinds of critters and Takahiro. Most of her smiling happened because of the latter two. Taks seemed to discover new ways to make her smile (or gasp or laugh or moan or shout or glare or a thousand other things) all the time, but the animals were like they’d always been. Mongo was still here, of course, and Majid had refused to be separated from Takahiro ever again and stalked around the big old house like he owned the place (maybe he did). The rest of the Family had gone back to the shelter to keep Clare safe (though she had been a magic user all along and helped the revolutionaries whenever she could, she refused to leave Station and her shelter), but every month or so one of the members of the Haven ‘cell would return home with a stray dog or cat or a bunny or—once (Ran, of course)—a turtle. The house was almost as full of animals as it was of people, and the grounds had their own critters, too. There was a horse and a mule in the old barn now, Val’s sheep in the yard, and a whole herd of cows who sometimes wandered onto the property from no one knew where. Maggie was in charge of animal oversight, making sure everyone was fed and getting along, and also deciding who would go on what missions and which animal was too exhausted and needed to stay home. No one ever mentioned that she was only just eighteen; her critter wrangling rights were unquestioned.

Between the animals and closing cobeys and studying magic with Val and her aunts, she kept plenty busy. So busy that she barely missed her old life, though she often did think wistfully of the times when she hadn’t had to be scared so often. But they were as safe here as they could be anywhere, and Taks…well, he honestly seemed happier than he ever had, at least when Maggie wasn’t putting herself in danger. He rarely fell into his old black moods, and when he was silent, Maggie was beginning to understand why. Probably his improved moods had something to do with this feeling like a home for him, and him being away from the straining reminders of his dad’s rejection all the time, and having a mentor to teach him to deal with his were nature. Luz was a shifter who was a cousin of Paolo’s—she changed into a cougar and had been mentored by her own father. She had joined the ‘cell a few months into the war and had been honored to teach Takahiro, even if she was the scowly type who pretended to be grumpy to hide a kind nature. Takahiro could shift at will now, though he preferred to let Maggie bring him back to his human shape after a mission. And she couldn’t complain, not when it meant getting to cuddle with Taks in bed. And sometimes do more than cuddle.

But if the deepness of Taks’ breathing was anything to go by, he was too tired for that tonight. And honestly, she probably was, too; she could feel sleep dragging her down into darkness, and as she drifted away, she didn’t even hear the door creak open.

But then something huge landed on top of her with a shriek and she shot upright, all drowsiness yanked away. “Majid!” How did that dreeping bugsucker manage to get the door with its old-fashioned glass handle open? It wasn’t like with Mongo pulling the handle on the back door down. This should have been impossible for a cat to open. Though she was more convinced as each day passed that Majid was not actually a cat. Or not only a cat.

“I think this hotwired tool is really a shifter who just stays in cat mode most of the time and only changes back to a person in order to open doors that should _stay closed_ ,” Maggie said pointedly. Majid seemed totally unconcerned, flopping down on top of Takahiro and turning his motor on. Above the jackhammer purring, Maggie could hear Taks chuckling.

“I think someone else missed me,” Taks said, voice amused.

“Not as much as _I_ did,” Maggie pouted. She sighed and was about to lay down again when something _else_ jumped on her and she suddenly had a mouthful of dog hair. “Mongo!” And of course he wouldn’t stay still, wriggling and bouncing and otherwise expressing his excitement that Takahiro was back.

Maggie felt something smack her in the face and then fall into her lap. When she picked it up, she discovered that it was one of the origami _kami_ that had fallen from its string above the bed. During the first few weeks after Goat Creek, when they were laying low in Haven and trying to figure out what to do next, she and Taks spent any hours they weren’t training sitting together on the massive couch in the library, folding _kami_. Once she’d claimed this room as her own, she’d hung up lengths of yarn all over the room and clothespinned origami to them. Ran said it made her room like a little kid’s nursery, but the figures made her feel safe, and when Taks was away, she especially liked to look at the critters he’d made for her. She reached out to put the fallen figure on her bedside table—she’d never be able to pin it back in the dark—and she felt her algebra book thump under her fingers and then a tiny set of too many feet rush up her arm. “You too, Hix?” she sighed as the _gruuaa_ settled around her neck and lengthened to pat tiny paws against Taks’ face in welcome.

“We are never going to be alone in bed, are we?” Takahiro asked, sounding half amused and half exasperated.

“Oh, we definitely will.” Maggie was not going to sacrifice all of her alone time with Taks, no matter how much she really did love her critters. Besides, Aunt Blanchefleur had taught her a spell just this morning that kept a door locked no matter what. She would definitely be putting that one to good use soon. “Just maybe not tonight.”

No, tonight was a night for a full bed. At least it was cold and not the middle of summer. When it was ninety degrees outside, even Maggie, who had more animal tolerance than anyone in the world (Jill said), couldn’t deal with a bed full of furry critters. 

But she’d deal with it tonight. She was too tired to protest and Mongo had settled down and sleepiness was rushing towards her again. She lay back down and nestled in as close beside Taks as she could when he was half-covered with not-a-cat and a border collie was demanding her own affection. She felt the brush of Takahiro’s long fingers against her hand and then he interwove them with hers. Somehow just holding his hand still gave her a little thrill. Thank the electric gods he was back safe. Another mission finished.

Though he’d have to go out again soon on another one, or she would, or Val, or Jill, or someone. Even Ran begged to be allowed to be involved although there was no way Mom was letting that happen for at least three or four more years. Though the thought of war lasting for three or four more years….

“Taks?”

“Mmm?” He sounded barely awake but she couldn’t keep the question inside.

“We are going to win, aren’t we?”

His hand tightened around hers and he was silent for a moment. Then: “Of course we’re going to win. Magic is the nature of the world. Physwiz _is_ reality. There was never any other, and reality always reasserts itself, no matter how hard you try to fight.”

The words made her feel warm and fond and…hopeful. But still, she couldn’t resist: “Gizmohead.”

“You’re the one in bed with a gizmohead.”

“Along with a gargantuan cat-thing, the world’s most energetic dog, and at least one _gruuaa_.” She thought she could feel a few more looping themselves around her ankles, though she was too tired to recognize them by name. “But tomorrow night,” she announced, hoping everyone currently in the room could hear her, even if they’d probably ignore her, “I’m locking the door.”


End file.
